Bangladesh Biology Olympiad: Exam Date, Marking Scheme, Sample Papers

Parent Organisation:

Bangladesh Biology Olympiad (IBO) is an association of national biology competitions from countries and regions that conducts the Biology Olympiad each year.

About Bangladesh Biology Olympiad:

Our existence is biological as well as social and our surroundings is inseparable from biological world. Deep knowledge and mature understanding about living world and biological phenomenon is thus a part and parcel of a modern human being. Advanced and clear knowledge about living beings and biological processes is essential to develop insight in order to explain, to utilize the understanding of natural laws for social benefit and above all, to be in a healthy harmony with the world as we know it. This approach to build insight should start from childhood. Needless to say, our education system is not quite enough to meet the challenge of developing proper insight up on this matter. So, to achieve the aforementioned goal, we have no alternative but to bring our youngster students to the broader spectrum of biological knowledge beyond the conventional education system. An interesting and effective method of doing so is competitive quest for knowledge.

Keeping above objective in mind, international competition on biology has been started along with other fields of science. Several educational missions have been commenced in Bangladesh regarding those international competitions on various sciences. We can now realize that, such activities help broaden the insight of a student as well as her/his inquisitiveness towards the deeper understanding of that particular field beyond the scope of textbooks. Not only that, such competitions transmit a sound and profound understanding of the creative potential of the subject in the young minds. The training and improvisation during the preparatory phase of the competition helps remove many difficulties of understanding. That is why, we are also going to launch biology olympiad in Bangladesh at large scale (from primary to higher secondary level). This is not only going to be a process to select Bangladesh representative for International Biological Olympiad, but also will it be a way to develop integrated insight on biological sciences as a whole for all the students of Bangladesh.

Although competition is necessary as an incentive to motivate students towards the discipline, we must not forget that, cooperation, not competition, is the main driving force of any society. Thus our ultimate goal is to develop cooperative mindset within everyone, even if our working strategy relies, among other things, on competition.

Syllabus:

Cell biology and biochemistry including microbiology & biotechnology — 20% marks
Plant anatomy and physiology with emphasis on seed plants— 15% marks

III. Animal anatomy and physiology with emphasis on vertebrates and especially man — 25% marks

Ethology— 5% marks
Genetics and Evolution— 20% marks
Ecology— 10% marks

VII. Biosystematics— 5% marks

NB: This syllabus is for National and International Biology Olympiads only. At Regional Biology Olympiads, above pattern may NOT be followed strictly since all categories do not have all the topics in their class textbooks.

Marking Scheme:

No marks will be deduced for incorrect response. Answering all four of the options of a particular test item correctly will be awarded 5 (five) points. Three correct responses of a test item will earn 3 (three) points. If you can get two of the responses correct within a single test item, you will be given 1 (one) point. No point will be awarded for making just 1 (one) correct response among four alternatives of a test item since this can mostly be done by wildly guessing true or false at random.